Nature Break: Chocolate Vine
It's June 1st and my garden is blooming.
Gardening and photography are two of my passions.
This year, my Chocolate Vine is particularly splendid. So named because the flowers reportedly smell somewhat like chocolate (mine don’t smell like much of anything), this vine has never bloomed so abundantly.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fertilizer I squirted around last season. Powdered garden fertilizer is onerous to apply if you’re mixing it by the scoopful into watering cans and then lugging those cans through the garden. Last year I started putting the fertilizer into empty dishwashing liquid bottles, filling those bottles with water, and then squirting the higher concentrate plant food at the base of targetted plants, trees, and shrubs.
It could be accidental or coincidental, but my garden is looking especially lush this Spring :-)
Glad to see you are taking some time to smell the flowers, so to speak.
Garden hose fertilizer sprayers
https://www.bobvila.com/articles/best-hose-end-sprayer/
evaluated for the home gardener.
Seems even easier than using old detergent squeeze bottles. And available at Home Depot.
Our garden is doing well this Spring, too, after a particularly cold Winter. Almost killed our Jasmine and did kill our Loropetalum. RIP, a Redbud has been called off the bench to play that position.
I'd never heard of a Chocolate Vine, thanks. It's very pretty. Paula is in charge of our garden, so I'll call it to her attention. If it can survive Winter in Canada, it'll cruise through Tennessee. :-)
How does it do with butterflies, and how long does it bloom?